An energy efficiency analysis of user-centric cell-free networks

This paper analyzes the energy efficiency of a user-centric cell-free network with a single user in uplink. The power consumption model considers the power consumed at the access points, at the user, and through the fronthaul links. Both capacity and energy efficiency are evaluated for different cluster sizes, and a classical cellular setup is adopted as benchmark. Numerical results show that the cell-free setup with all access points is less energy efficiency than the cellular setup, but delivers larger capacity. Besides, by limiting the cluster size, the cell-free energy efficiency is significantly improved at the cost of some affordable decrease in capacity.